Write Offs
by Shiggity Shwa
Summary: Vala deals with a toddler in three different storylines. Only chapter 3 deals with SGA. Each chapter is AU. Part 9 of 10.
1. Dominant Traits

Write Offs

Chapter 1

Dominant Traits

A broken heart. That's all it is.

She wakes every day long before her alarm, long before the alarm still set to wake him for a jog. Her hands lay ridged at her side, and she stares at the ceiling until the crosshatched pattern in the panels blends with her gathering tears. Until light dims and brightens in the far wall of the room in a simulated sunrise.

Has relearned how to cry silently less the body beside her stir and wake and discover her tears. Doesn't sob or shake, just closes her eyes in what she wishes was sleep, the itchy wetness gliding over her cheeks until she lets out a gasp and wipes them away with the back of her hand.

Then morning comes, and she replaces the masks she created a year ago. The alarm wails at the side of her bed and she smacks it off within a second. Snuffles away her sadness, her sleep, and sits on the edge of the bed, feet flat on the bare metal floor, and after a single sigh, she stands to rouse her bed buddy.

Places a kiss on the back of the tiny head with ashy brown curls and rubs the back pumping in air like the humming birds that would flit through his backyard, breathing a thousand times a minute with tiny innocent heart. "Time to wake up, darling."

Light blue eyes drift open, and disappear as a yawn rakes her body, a wide, lion roar of a yawn showcasing two rows of perfect baby teeth and pink tongue. Soft, warm hands ball into fists as her little one stretches her back as if she's been carrying the world the entire night, and then her feet, lined with an elastic cuff of pajama pants, kick the blanket away.

"That was a big yawn," she laughs as she wants to cry, her hand cupping Beatrice's round cheeks under sleepy eyes. "Did you have a good sleep?"

Her daughter smashes one of the fists into her own eye, rubbing the sleep away and shrugs. "S'okay."

And it hurts because she is so much like him, when she barely knew him at all.

Crouching so they're roughly the same height, she smooths down Beatrice's curls, the ones she'll spend half an hour taming and littering with her pins until her daughter gives her approval. She spoils her, because he's not here to do it when he promised to.

When she sits on the edge of the bed, Beatrice shuffles closer to her, wrapping her tiny arms around her waist, her head hiding against her ribs, which is good because her smile is shaky at best. "I don't know about you, but I'm awfully hungry."

"Mama, I'm starving." Her daughter throws her head back in toddler theatrics that always bring a smile to her face.

"Then let's get ready and go get breakfast." Taps her on the back and they both hop off the side of the bed.

Beatrice stands at the dresser, yanking out the bottom drawer and rifling through for clothing. Her head turns over her shoulder and with a stern look she questions, "Can I have Fruit Loops?"

She flicks the comforter in the air, clearing it of any wrinkles. "If they have them, darling."

"What if they don't?"

"Then we'll have to have a contingency plan." Floats the comforter over the pressed sheets and tucks the corners in.

"What's that?" In her tiny arms, Beatrice carries over enough clothing for at least four outfits and then flops to the ground in the pile.

"A backup."

"Okay."

As her daughter giggles, rolling in the clothing she's splayed out, she catches her trembling lip between her teeth. It's been a year and it hurts like it's the same day.

The same day they said he didn't come back.

"That's the Eye of Horus." Daniel balances her daughter on his lap as she leans her elbow into the table, staring at the ancient text half bored and a little finicky. He, however, is thoroughly entertained in trying to teach a two-and-a-half-year-old how to decipher symbols littered on Earth by the Ancients. "See how the stylization in the line strokes differed from the Eye of Ra."

"Daniel?" Beatrice's chubby cheeks pillow against her fist and the way she speaks his name sounds more like 'Dannel'. If he was here, she would probably already be calling Daniel some variant of Sunshine.

He stops his lesson, his finger pressed to the page, but he turns his attention towards Beatrice. "Yes?"

Her tiny hand moves to his cheek and pats it once before she explains, with her nonchalance and honesty. "I don't care."

Daniel rolls his eyes and takes her tiny hand in his before picking her up and setting her down on the ground. "Of course you don't."

As Beatrice bounces away into the corner of the office, once Daniel's pristine archeology office, then her shared office with him, now the office housing Ancient artifacts and very rare texts along with a wicker basket of preferred toys and a drawer full of crayons, she raises her head from the computer where she's doing what she does everyday. "Why do I somehow feel that that insult was directed at me."

"It wasn't an insult." He chuckles and wipes his glasses clean of bitty fingerprints and when Beatrice appears beside him with a box of crayons, he takes it from her with a grin, opens it, and hands it back. He watches her bound off again to fall flat on her stomach on an activity mat he never really agreed to put in his office, but Beatrice scrapped her knee once on the hard tile and he didn't argue after that. He grins again watching her rage color across the page, just fanning the red crayon back and forth ignoring all lines within the book. "She's just so much like you."

Drops her eyes from him and her daughter, who's kicking her legs through the air and humming a song to herself. "It's not as if she has someone else to imitate."

"Vala," he sighs, but he understands, his anger towards her, his shortness diffused once she had Beatrice, perhaps even a bit before when she was plagued with multiple sicknesses while humongously pregnant. But his attitude cemented in place when Cameron went missing. His hand slides towards hers. "That's not what—"

When his fingertips touch her skin, she tugs away her hand, returning to the keyboard as she scrolls through a list of over a thousand gate addresses. In a year she's gotten it down from nearly half a million. Everyday she cross-references the planet of his last known whereabouts with similar planets in the system and the list of last dialed addresses.

He was ambushed, pressed the rest of the team towards the Gate but didn't make it through with them. Made it off the planet, but by the time they accessed the DHD, more than fifty other dialling attempts had been made wiping the memory. He's been captured, living as a prisoner, and she wakes up in her room in the complex in a nice bed every morning because she refuses to live in his house without him.

Not really employed by the SGC anymore, rather living off his benefits as after the year they declared him as dead. Landry allows her to stay and search, perhaps because he's taken a shine to her or perhaps because her daughter has her smile and he can't refuse them both.

Daniel leaves his hand stationary and flat on the table beside her laptop. "We'll find him, Vala."

"I'll find him," she corrects, poking her head around the computer screen to check on her daughter because she's being too quiet. The toddler is drawing on the white tiles with wax crayons, using each square as a separate tableau. "You've stopped searching."

"You know that's not fair. I have other priorities in—Beatrice, no!" Daniel jumps from his chair removing the crayon from her hand and stepping on her lovely picture. "We don't—"

Beatrice breaks into tears, yanking her hand free from Daniel's and fleeing to her arms. She encircles her daughter hoisting her up onto her lap and petting the curls away from sticking to her cheeks. "It's alright."

"Vala she has to learn—"

"And you could be gentler with her," she snaps, as her shirt dampens with her daughter's tears. "It's alright, darling. Daniel was upset because you were drawing on his floors."

"I was—" There's snuffling and sniffing and one hiccup. "I was making it pretty."

"Daniel knows that darling, but he really likes his floor plain and ugly." She hears him sigh behind her as she rocks Beatrice a bit, while an algorithm runs on the computer to narrow down the gate addresses further.

"It's ugly."

"I know, but it's his floor." Wipes the chubby cheeks, his chubby cheeks, free of tears and stares at light blue eyes that are not from her. "So you should apologize."

"I'm sorry." Beatrice seeks him out, apologizing, but leans her head against her shoulder still for the comfort as she rocks them a bit in the squeaky office chair.

"I'm sorry too, Beatrice." He pats her head and retrieves a piece of plain paper from the printer. "Do you think you could draw me a picture instead?"

She nods and moves to hop off her lap but stops, instead staring at the list of green symbols and numbers on the screen. "What's that?"

"That," she inhales deeply, her eyes meeting Daniel's albeit briefly, and she rolls her chair closer so Beatrice can see. She sits her daughter forward and feels the thump of her heart beneath her palm on her back. "That is a list of places your Daddy might be."

"Mama?" Beatrice sits on the bed, the covers pulled down and welcoming for another brief night of sleep, while yearning for a man who sacrificed everything to save their team and she hates him for it.

She hates him for it.

"Yes, darling?" Shuffles to the doorway of the ensuite, an upgraded room, with a small bathroom facility. Offered to give her one of the guest suites with more than one room, but they've always slept in the same room, and if they didn't, she would be up all night with a secondary concern.

Her daughter closes the picture book before her, signalling a serious conversation. "You don't talk about Daddy."

He promised he would come back and then he never did. He held her in the doorway of the gate room as she held their fussing, year-old daughter who missed her afternoon nap for family time because the mission was going to take a week, and Beatrice would cry for him. He kissed her on the forehead and played with the ring on her finger and told her he loved her, loved them, and would see them in a week and he lied.

He lied to them and she hates him for it.

Hates him because she loves him so much and now such a large part of her is empty because he's not here, because he promised her marvellous things which he delivered, but then disappeared and she can't let him go.

"Because it's hard." She could have lied to their daughter, but she knows how it feels. Knows the emptiness behind it, so instead she sits on the side of the bed and feels the mattress shudder with a toddler's four-legged crawl to sit beside her. "Because Daddy disappeared very suddenly."

"He coming back?"

"Eventually."

Beatrice taps her on the leg twice, and with his straight lips and stern eyebrows she answers. "Then you just gotta wait."


	2. One Night

Write Offs

Chapter 2

One Night

It's a bad habit. That's all it is.

She leaves.

Not right away, because that would just be in poor taste. Waits and deals with unfinished business, with a diabolical daughter hell bent on exterminating any unbelievers, and she encounters her beautiful baby girl, the one that did grow up to get her figure and her cunning senses, the one who grew up too fast but still has a bit of that childlike naivety she had when they ate their first and only meal together, when she spouted propaganda and then grew frazzled at being blown off.

Don't get her wrong, she enjoyed her time with the team, shopping with Sam, hunting with Teal'c, something called a high school reunion with Cam, and what she honestly thought was categorized as a date with Daniel, but honestly she doesn't remember enough about the night to construct a fair argument, so she might have just misread the situation and applied the Tau'ri label to irk him.

She bonds with this team. The only group of people she's trusted implicitly with her half-truths. Sometimes, even her whole truths. Trusted enough to let her memory be wiped, twice, much like the fire wiping the consciousness from her body. Wakes up sometimes and doesn't know who she is, doesn't know if the Vala they know is truly her, or just another embodiment of a character she's nothing like.

She'll never be the doting wife, the nurturing mother.

Had one baby that lived and got to watch her die. Got to watch her daughter dissipate while throttling the life from her. A nurturing mother she is obviously not.

Oddly enough she encounters Tomin again, he pops up rising in the ranks of the army but can never quite bring himself to shoot her again. Perhaps, it's against orders since she's the mother of the Orici and all, but she is captured, brought aboard an Ori mothership and he blathers to her words from a fake religious text. He hits her. Then saves her and she's left reeling in his wake, thinking about him and the nights they spent early on in Ver Isca when he still had the limp, when he was just her Tomin.

Watches him leave through the gate after declining his invitation to continue his journey with him because it is just that; his journey. He has a lot of mending to do and her accompanying him would simply get in the way of who he is to become now when free of the Ori shackles. It's why she spent so long alone after being rid of Qetesh.

Should have spent more time alone because she still doesn't know who she is.

Told Tomin she was going to stay on Earth with the Tau'ri because she had a good thing going with them, that she was doing well. Daniel said the same thing to her at their friendship dinner, that she remembers. Playing with the white flower in her hair nervously while trying to order three martinis because Tau'ri alcohol is so weak.

Perhaps it's just Tau'ri constitutions that are weak.

She leaves.

Had always intended on leaving, even as she swung her legs into Tomin's lap and told him she intended to stay as she tried not to think about her ascended daughter killed by an Ancient, as she tries not to feel empty and vacant with the reverberations of the earlier torture session still fresh enough to jitter through her body.

Pure cunning, a shared familiar trait, she sneaks out in the night. She doesn't need to use the Sodon cloak, doesn't need to lockdown the gate room frantically dialing out while chevrons clack into place. Just bold face lies to Walter, giving him a gate address and telling him she's been approved for a leave, which she isn't.

After that and several gate jumps, one of which she stopped briefly to remove her tracker, she finds herself back on a commerce planet, one a little less low tech than Earth, but with a lot more future prospects, and only time to figure out who she is.

Two years pass, and she finds that she's the same person, only different. Great at swindling, thieving, lying, and all the fun things that'll get her banished from the ultimate paradise, but who needs paradise when she can steal a cargo ship in less than two minutes.

The thing is, something holds her back. It's not an affiliation to those people, to the team she left in the black of night without so much as a letter scrawled on a sheet of paper. She packed light, a change of clothes, all the Earth money she could withdraw from her account without looking suspicious, and a few hair clippies.

It's not that she cares about them and hopes they're doing okay, or that she misses them and often wonders what they're up to at any particular moment. It's also not if they've been worried and wondering about her, because they haven't. Important Tau'ri with important Tau'ri tasks, the Earth still nascent in space, which is enough to preoccupy them. It wasn't that she thought she loved them; she knew she did in the way she smiled fondly to herself at memories of beating Cameron and Daniel in a game of basket's ball with Teal'c hefting her to the hoop, or the way she sobbed with Sam after two and a half bottles of that sour Tau'ri alcohol because she had a friend she trusted enough to talk about her daughter with and who she knew she wouldn't share a word.

It was that whenever she saw someone in need, someone about to be shot by guards, or a woman being robbed, or a starving child on the streets, that she was no longer able to turn her head. She had to engage, had to help and it often ended up with her getting tossed into a dusty, dirty prison cell, which is where she finds herself now.

The shackles really are a bit much, all she did was save a child slave from a public beating by shooting the owner in the face. Yes, she was technically accountable for murder, but the look on that little boy's face when he scurried to freedom is well worth the itch at her wrists and the restraint in her arms. Remembers what it felt like to gain the freedom, after going from parents to a slave owner, to herself, could finally become herself and just as she was learning who she was sometime after husbands one and two, Qetesh came along and wiped her existence away. She's been fighting to get it back ever since.

She's hungry and tired and faintly reminded of being confined to a bench in a Ver Isca square where her baby roiled within her for food. Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth and she's late into day two of confinement, usually by now she's sweettalked the guard enough with fanning eyelashes and puckered lips that they let her out under the pretense of a tryst, but then she just kicks them in the head when they're distracted by her body and books it out of the jail. She's lost several good bras this way.

The guard bangs an armored fist against the iron bars rousing her from the front fall of sleep she was tumbling into. Her eyes scan his hands for any sign of water or food, and her shoulders sag further to find them empty.

"Forgive me if I'm wrong." The long link of chains clacks back against the solid rock wall as she pulls on the rusty metal to sit up straight, to not show her fatigue, her hunger. "But you are planning on feeding me, right? I mean if you're not, could you have the decency to tell me so that every time your rotund form waddles—"

The guard's thick arm smashes into the bars again, leaving a horrible reverberation. She folds her lips together, the skin sticking in dehydration. The guard grumbles at her. "You got a visitor."

It takes her a moment to process his statement, because of lack water, lack of food, lack of sleep, lack of safety. Just constantly running and she gave it up but can't figure out why when it just feels natural. Not good, not healthy, but natural for her to be alone and on the move.

But then Daniel shuffles out from behind the guard, a bit older, a bit more haggard. Same glasses, only the single pair because the others are probably still in her unmentionable's drawer, a grizzly man's beard grown in with lightened hair in places, gray starting to speckle through. He turns to the guard nodding. "Yep this is her." When his head turns back, he has the same grimace of disappointment she hasn't seen in two years but could sketch out in her sleep. "Tell Mordock that we have a deal."

The guard grunts, and nods before marching back towards the door.

"Keys," Daniel calls, holding out his empty palm.

"Only Mordock may release—"

But Daniel swarms up on the guard, his body not bigger, or taller, but more rigid, just more imposing. "I'm paying enough for her. Give me the damn keys."

The guard deposits the keys into his hand and flees through a large wooden door. Daniel unlocks the cell with a clunk and walks in stopping just before her. "I supposed I should ask if you even want to come with me."

Won't meet his condescending eyes as she tugs at the chains again, stretching her body to turn into the wall and away from him. "Not really."

"Well, tough shit."

His hand slips inside hers, fingers warm, palm soft, tips a bit calloused, as he shoves a tiny key into the shackle lock. When it pops off her wrist, she tries to duck around him, but his hand slams into her shoulder, settling her back into sitting against the wall. The second shackle drops free and when he stands she can only see the SGC issued army boots.

Manages to stand with his help, his arm around her back as the muscles in her legs creak from being tucked underneath her for the last two days. He still smells like day old coffee and the pages of old books. "I got SGC to contact most off-world prisons and put out an APB for you."

Her feet are heavy and drag over the gravelly floor. "A what?"

"Basically, they call us when you show up." He grunts raising her arm over his shoulder and stepping in time with her. "Had you a few planets ago, but you broke out of the prison before we got there."

"Daniel, I really don't want—"

"You need medical attention. You also need a shower. Oh, and the SGC and I just paid a ludicrous amount of money for you, so you could honor us with your presence for one night."

One night turns into two, then three, then five, then two weeks. After she's done with the pageantry of catching up, the exchanging stories and laughing around a dinner table that is a table in the commissary because she is not allowed off base. After she's done with the basketball game, girls' nights, and movie marathons, the familiar itch comes back, buried deep at her shackle scars, the one telling her to run.

At three in the morning when she's packing her bag again, after a day of going through physical and psychological examinations to determine if her body and mind are sound enough for her to return to duty, he enters her room. Doesn't knock, doesn't call to her, just enters her room and stands, his hands piercing his hips and the disappointment grimace returning anew.

"Again." The door closes behind him and the glow from fake moonlight streaming through a fake, decorative window bathes them in cool hues. "Again, Vala."

"You wouldn't understand." She shoves a sweater Sam bought for her into the bag and zips it up.

"Obviously." He tosses his arms into the air, turning away from her, pacing, his hand raking through his hair. "I mean, you stayed three years last time."

"I had a duty, I had to stop Adria—"

"You didn't have to."

"Yes, I did. I birthed her. I created her. Thousands died because of her—"

"You didn't create her, the Ori—"

"She was my responsibility, Daniel, and now that my massacring daughter is dead, there is no reason for me to stay."

He pivots back to her, his beard still surprising, and his jaw setting underneath the mound of hair. "What about the team?"

"I love the team Daniel, really I do."

"But?"

"But this isn't my place, I don't belong here. I—"

And he kisses her.

Her words clear cut, his mouth collapsing over hers, his hands solid on the side of her face and it's surprising and so jarring that she has no time to react. His lips and fingers, the taste of stale coffee, the smell of old books.

The kiss softens and shortens into small smacks and pecks, his thumbs strumming over her cheeks as he rests his forehead against hers. "Stay for me."


	3. Klaxonner

Write Offs

Chapter 3

Klaxonner

It is all changed because of him. That's all it is.

She sits at her desk in the backdrop of the ocean, the same purple and orange backdrops bleeding across the walls of the room. Sits just as she has for the last three years, tracing the pattern of the setting sun over her far wall, trying not to stare at the smashed picture of SG-1, and her and him standing there, beside each other, before any of this happened.

Examining the Ori oar for the umpteenth time because it's the only clue they have left as to where the hybrid ship might have shot off too. Wishes she could have been cognitive for those last moments, but her memories are of a dark ship, her cold body, and pain so strong it rippled from her hips and lower back down her legs.

The Ori oar with the same intercut symbols in the same pattern as the day before and the day before and she'll sit here until the room grows dark, until her eyes can't make out the symbols any longer, forcing herself to ruminate on when she was stuck in Ver Isca, when she was stuck as Qetesh, to uncover any shrouded clues to interpret the artifact differently.

Daniel's sacrifice shouldn't be unjust.

A knock at the door pulls her out of her reverie, her deep glazed stare into the same oar that used to sit upon an examination table that she has since just slapped over her desk because standing all day was growing tiresome.

He walks into the room, the same grim half-smile on his face he always greets her with. Understands her work, doesn't try to talk her out of it as Rodney or Shepperd try to, is more empathetic to her grieving like Teyla is, and perhaps it comes with the simple notion of not being Tau'ri, that all three of them have witnessed wars and lost comrades, neighbors, and family in extremely unjust and horrific manners.

"Someone wanted to see you." From his arms he releases their son, just on the end of toddlerhood with still knocking knees and a wobbled but forceful stride towards her. His face illuminates as he recognizes her sitting behind the desk like she has done for much of his life. Sitting in the same chair, breastfeeding him with one arm tucked under the crook of his body while the other frantically typed away filing through the database for references.

His tiny laughter punctuates through the air like the softest gunfire she's ever heard. This morning she dressed him in a plaid button up shirt with a t-shirt with some unknown cartoon character on it beneath and a teensy pair of slacks. Somehow reminiscent of his age but also his father, and even if she found Daniel, she still wouldn't know how he would fit into the familial equations, but perhaps she would try harder to figure it out.

"Samson," she greets her perfect little boy with a bright grin and he clasps his warm sticky hands around the legs of her tights, no doubt staining them with strawberry jam. Hefting his weight up, she sits him in her lap, and his face and round cheeks are the picture of perfection. "My darling boy, have you had a good day?"

"Went golfin, Mama." His chubby little fingers fondle the golden necklace she's wearing, and she can't blame the boy for garnering her eye for fine wares.

"You went golfing?" Asks her son but stares over him to Ronon who scratches the back of his head and shrugs, leaning against the wall.

"He just whipped about a dozen balls into the ocean," he clarifies with a big grin on his face, obviously proud at their toddler's misdeeds. "Would've dumped the whole bucket if Shepperd didn't get so upset at the loss."

"Oh, Samson." Nuzzles her nose to her son's cheek and relishes in his laugh. She's had leagues of men dedicate their love to her, had hundreds of thousands of worshippers as Qetesh, yet she has never heard a sound quick so divine as his jovial little shriek. "I'm sure what your father means is that he would have never let you set foot on that slippery side deck with the poorly constructed guardrail."

Ronon shrugs, knows how to play the game as well as her, and he bites the inside of his bottom lip. "Boy's gotta learn sometime."

"Yes, well the boy is hardly three-years-old yet." When he reaches a jammy hand towards the oar, she collects him back into her lap quickly, and stands so his sneakered feet hang from her hip. "Perhaps taking him to areas from which he could easily slip and tumble into the ocean below should be prohibited."

Ronon, of course, cracks first because he usually cracks first. His grin turns genuine not cheeky and he pushes himself off the wall. "He wanted to see you, baby." Lumbers forward meeting her in two steps, his finger wiping an eyelash or a makeup smudge from her cheek. "I told him we could hang with Torren and Shepperd while they took pot shots."

"He can always come and see me." Bounces him against her hip and his full lips curl into her grin. "Isn't that right my precious boy?"

"Right, mama." Throws himself into a hug again, this time his cheek pressing into hers and every time it is a gift. After Adria, after her past husbands, she did not envision rearing a child ever again and now that she has him and he's here, she enjoys every moment of it because the Ori, the Wraith, probably hover closer than they think.

"Well, I kinda wanted to see you too." Ronon's hand falls firm over the small of her back, guiding her closer to him.

Crooks and eyebrow at him and allows herself to be reeled inwards. "Is that so?"

"It's always so." The deepness of his voice mellows out as his breath, his words grow nearer to her. He punctuates the end of the sentence with a kiss, his lips covering hers with intensity, more than she's been used to in the last few months, since delving fully into finding Daniel and protect their son. Let's his warmth consume her, retuning the kiss in fervent fashion, her hand scrolling up his arm, his cupping the side of her face.

But something forces their bodies apart, the kiss to break and her eyes to flutter open. In her arms, Samson has managed to bring his leg to Ronon's shoulder, and is driving him away with succinct kicks. "No. My. Mama."

The possessive phase was quite adorable when he started it a few months ago, not allowing anyone to conversate or touch her without his explicit agreement, but now it grows old as even cuddling on the couch turns into a debate with the toddler.

"Okay. Okay." Ronon rubs his shoulders in mock hurt, his wink not lost on her. "I never said she wasn't your mom."

"No touch."

"Fine, but that's not the way little brothers or sisters are made."

"Ohhh." Her son nods and does a very obvious wink with one eye, then the other.

Glancing between him and Ronon she sighs and sets the boy on his two feet again to cause a ruckus throughout her office. All of the dangerous artifacts are up high, and he has a small basket of trucks and dolls to choose from in the corner.

She crosses her arms and a blush blooming at her cheeks. "Please tell me you did not bring up the subject of a younger sibling to him."

"Of course not." His hand blankets her shoulder, then slides down the back of her bicep and in the sensation, she allows herself to be tugged closer again. "He brought it up to me."

Ridgely fits the tip of her head under his chin as he ensnares her in a bear hug of sorts. "I thought we talked about this."

"No, no." Holds her at arms length and they both pause the debate to watch Samson crawl over the floor holding a doll under his arm while scooting a wooden car across the tiles. When Ronon's eyes capture hers again, they're soft, but genuine. "We were supposed to have a talk about this six months ago, but you got more wrapped up in your translations—"

"I am trying to keep him safe."

"Which is great. I want the little man safe too. But I don't think we have to put everything on hold to—"

"And what if they come back again?"

"Who?"

"The Ori or Wraith or whomever?" Eyes burn from the research, the daydreaming while clacking away at a computer all day instead of laying on her stomach on the floor with her beautiful boy. "What if they come back for him, or worse, for the next one?"

"Vala—"

"What if I don't make it back next time."

The topic dies dry as another knock at the door interrupts. Has to remind herself to unset her jaw, relax her shoulders and enjoy the brief glimpse of her son coddling a car and driving a doll across the floor now.

"Auntie Sam." Samson abandons all toys in the middle of the floor, running over to embrace her, tiny arms strangling around her leg, his chin digging against her knee.

"Hey Buddy." Sam grins at him, her hand rubbing reassuringly against his back. She uses the other hand to direct herself and wheels into the room at a slow enough pace that he can keep up.

"Where's the other chair?"

"Sonny," Ronon's voice timbers in a low growl as he walks towards the boy. It's still a sensitive subject, Samantha's still in physiotherapy, they're all still in psychological therapy, but there are certain things none of them talk about. The extent of her injuries, the loss of Daniel.

"It's all right." The grin is genuine, and she lets Samson clamber upon her lap. He prefers her mechanical wheelchair because of the variety of buttons and levers. Samantha is quick as ever to read a situation though and she drags her eyes between them questioning, "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

"No." She answers flat before Ronon even has a say. His shoulders fall out of relaxation into an area of dejection, and he will not look at her, but he remains quiet. "Nothing that can't wait a little while longer."

"Auntie Sam?" Her son leans across Samantha's lap, pushing on the arms and sides of the manual wheelchair. "Where's the horn."

"There is none on this one, Sonny." She restrains him with hands on either side of his torso and he freezes until she fans out her fingers, tickling him into a fit of marvelous giggles. She doesn't remember much about being a child, but she knows she never laughed this much or was ever in this high of spirits. "I thought you'd take care of the horn part for me."

"Where are we headed?" Ronon asks as Sam repositions herself at the doorway ready to scroll into the hallway.

"Conference room. McKay thinks he might have found evidence of an Ori-Wraith colony on an outer rim planet." The sound of wheels running against tile is intercepted by her son's mouth klaxoning in the impression of a horn.

* * *

 _A/N: Only one more story in the series. Heads up that it takes place 2 years in the future._


End file.
